Family Photos

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Here is my daughter Anne as happy as I have seen her, in April of 2006 with her own young family. Little Luke becomes a teenager in just a few days--and Libby is not far behind.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p><div></div>

[GerrySiegel]

Old color slide salvaged by B and W conversion.<div></div>

[AlanKlein]

Isn't it noteworthy how we find our family pictures

more interesting than the kind of photos we mainly

talk about as a past-time whether landscape.street

etc. We're more animated and you can hear the love

in our voices. When you come down it, family

pictures are the raison d'etra of photography.

Always was. Always will be.

[Julie H]

<p>Alan wrote: "family pictures are the raison d'etra of photography."</p>

<p>No. No more than cell phone conversations 24/7 wherever and whenever you feel like having an animated love-in-your-voices, (those people who Will. Not. Shut. Up.) conversation is the raison d'etra of the telephone. Photography (and the telephone) don't have "a" raison d'etra; they're just tools/means.</p>

<p>Your punishment, Alan, for making an "Always was. Always will be" statement in our Casual Conversation, will be ten lashes of the Philosophical lash:</p>

<p>/begin punishment</p>

<p>Family photos are to imaging what conversation/chit-chat is to Shakespeare. The former is extremely local, perfectly unskilled. The latter is ... not. Chit-chat is mood noise; social/interpersonal micro-positioning as well as the oil of one's daily getting-things-done, etc.</p>

<p>But in its spontaneity, conversation (chit-chat) is also a marvelous occasion of ongoing learning. In a conversation, you and I go back and forth, working out things that neither of us had figured out without or before this trivial, meandering exchange. It's ... delicious.</p>

<p>Most of the photography (I'm including video) to which we are all exposed every day, all day is *not* a conversation. It's statements. 'Buy this!' 'Do this!' 'Don't do that!' 'This happened' 'This is what things look like.' Period. They show. You look. Statements from an absent speaker/show-er.</p>

<p>I value, enjoy, <em>love</em>, many family photos of the kind shown and linked in this thread because they take me back to an <em>open</em> visual conversation. Note, however, that <em>good</em> art is <em>also</em> open -- more so, better so, and much more forcefully and long-lastingly so (I can/will look at good art photography over and over and over again with ever renewed discovery each time) than family photos. I love family photos for their effortless openness in spite of their local/limited effect beyond that germinal force (unlike good art, they rarely call me back for third or fourth looks).</p>

<p>/End punishment. At ease! Please return to full Casualness.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Maybe <em>raison d'etra</em> was the wrong choice of words. I never was good at foreign languages. But, I still think personal pictures are the most important for 90% of the people who take photographs. Look around your house and the homes of those you visit. Mostly people shots of family are the ones that are displayed. Look at their photo albums. I don't subscribe to Facebook, but I bet someone could verify for me that it's similar. </p>

<p>My point was though that just the tenor of the discussion in this thread shows the love people are feeling about their family shots. You just don't get that impression when they discuss their other photography. Those are mostly about technique, and critique, and ego, not love.</p>

[MichaelChang]

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Mostly people shots of family are the ones that are displayed. Look at their photo albums. I don't subscribe to Facebook, but I bet someone could verify for me that it's similar."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>My observation of Facebook postings supports your suspicion, Alan; at least among young families with children.<br>

</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>"this thread shows the love people are feeling about their family shots. You just don't get that impression when they discuss their other photography. Those are mostly about technique, and critique, and ego, not love."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>We probably enjoy viewing family photos of others because we can extract shared experiences; a way of forming perceptions of commonalities quickly without exchange of words as much by what other share as what they choose not to share. <br>

<br>

On the other hand, those looking for higher art forms in others' family photos are likely also seeking common ground but more at an artistic and intellectual level. Love is incidental. <br>

<br>

<br>

</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Well, sure. I'm not going to feel the same love of the people in your family shots. But my point is that I can feel the love from the words people use when they posted shots of their family, dogs, etc. That's great. I applaud Julie for starting this thread. It shows another part of our photography that we often don't discuss, and should. </p>

<p>To paraphrase a saying, <em>"No one thinks about all the landscape photos they missed while on their death bed."</em></p>

[didereaux]

<p>Second and third shots of grandson with his new camera.<br /> <img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2912/14324378624_a0c0a51cca_z.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="461" /><br>

<img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2900/14138462488_0a8368928f_z.jpg" alt="" /></p>